Citation

Johnson NE. Rural Sociol. (1936) 1999; 64(1): 44-65.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1999, Rural Sociological Society, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/j.1549-0831.1999.tb00004.x

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Using the two waves (1987-1988 and 1992-1994) from the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH), I focused on the 3,792 Main Respondents (MRs) living in sexual unions at Wave 1 who, along with the spouse or domestic partner, were successfully recontacted at Wave 2. MRs from both formal marriages and nonmarital cohabitations were included. An identically worded set of questions about proper roles for men and women was posed to each member of the pair at Wave 1 and again at Wave 2. An Exploratory Factor Analysis uncovered two factors. A conservative orientation on the Sexuality/Reproduction Factor (#1) defined legal marriage as the only acceptable domain for sexual intercourse, pregnancy, and childbirth. An orthodox perspective on the Childcare Factor (#2) assigned mothers the primary responsibility for the care of young children and men responsibility for earning the main living. In this study, we tested the hypotheses that nonmetro residents would be more conservative on both sex-role dimensions than metro residents at Wave 1, would be slower than metro residents to adopt more egalitarian attitudes, and thus would remain more traditional on both sex-role dimensions at Wave 2. The influence of nonmetro-to-metro and metro-to-nonmetro migration, as well as the sway over attitudes of the spouse/partner, was taken into account.

Language: en